History

Damon Salvatore was born the elder son of Guiseppe Salvatore during the 1840s. He had a younger brother by the name of Stefan, and his father tended to favor Stefan over the more rebellious Damon. In spite of this, the two brothers were very close. They resided in Mystic Falls, Virginia. He grew up in the Southern town, living a relatively normal life for the time period. His father was a successful businessman and a member of the Founders’ Council. His family was of Italian descent.

Damon fought for the Confederacy in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, but he eventually deserted and returned home to Mystic Falls. Sometime shortly after his return, his family took in a supposedly orphaned young lady from Atlanta by the name of Katherine Pierce. The truth was that Katherine was a vampire, but at the time, this was unknown to the Salvatore family. Both Damon and Stefan developed feelings for Katherine.

In time, she seduced both brothers and took them to bed. She also revealed her true vampire nature to both of them. While she used her vampire abilities to manipulate Stefan’s mind and induce him to accept the arrangement (her feeding off of him and her having her way with both brothers), the situation with Damon has not been made as clear. (In the series, Damon claims that he knew the whole truth and accepted it without any manipulation, but between his tendency to lie and the possibility that his belief was the result of her influence, it is difficult to say for certain.) He watched Katherine trap and kill one and possibly several other victims so that she could feed.

Eventually, by 1865, the Founders’ Council of Mystic Falls grew suspicious of the deaths taking place in the town. They figured out that there were vampires present in the town and decided to take action. Damon was determined to protect Katherine, and he asked Stefan to protect her secret, warning him against telling their father. Unfortunately, Stefan spoke sympathetically of vampires to their father in the hopes of enlisting his help in protecting Katherine. While he said nothing directly, his behavior made their father suspicious enough. Guiseppe gave Stefan a drink laced with vervain, causing Katherine to choke and grow weak when she fed off of him. Guiseppe then captured Katherine and placed her with the other vampires that the townspeople were able to capture. Damon viewed Stefan’s actions on that day in revealing Katherine’s true nature as a betrayal, and he could not forgive Stefan for causing him to lose Katherine.

The 27 captured vampires were placed in Fell’s Church. The church was then burned. Damon made a deal with a witch named Emily—she protected the vampires by entombing them in the ground under the church with a spell that she could reverse 145 years later, and in return, Damon would protect her descendants. Although Damon kept his end of the bargain, Emily would later return in spirit form to make certain that the tomb remained closed.

Damon became a vampire shortly after Katherine’s death. It was then that he began to take his revenge on his brother Stefan. He spent much of the time after Katherine’s death popping up in Stefan’s life and attempting to destroy whatever happiness Stefan had found. The two brothers became bitter enemies, the divide between them only deepening with time.

Damon was ruthless. He would kill without any hint of remorse, and unlike Stefan, Damon had no hesitation about feeding on humans. This gave him a greater strength than his brother, and it also made human beings his prey. Wherever Damon went, death often followed in his wake. Aside from tormenting Stefan, Damon was presumably having a good time. He had many conquests over the years. He spent time on the campus of at least one college and probably moved around from place to place between visits to Stefan. That itinerant lifestyle continued until Damon returned to Mystic Falls, following his brother there. Stefan had returned due to the presence of a girl named Elena Gilbert who was a dead ringer for Katherine. Stefan began attending high school there to meet her, and due to his physical appearance being that of a seventeen-year-old, he had no problem doing so.

Fifteen years had passed between the last time Damon saw his brother and the two remained on hostile terms. Prior to making his presence known to Stefan, he attacked a girl Vicki and left her alive to be found, intentionally trying to stir up trouble for his brother. He then appeared at the Salvatore Boarding House (the home that a descendent of theirs named Zack lives in and maintains; the boarding house becomes the home of both Damon and Stefan while they are in Mystic Falls) and picked a fight with Stefan, once again refusing to put their physical rivalry aside. During the fight, Damon was able to steal Stefan’s ring at a time close to dawn. He could have left Stefan without it to die, but instead, he returned it. In spite of the enmity between the brothers, some scrap of their connection remained, at least to the point of Damon keeping his brother alive.

Damon then continued his manipulative games. He introduced himself around as Stefan’s older brother, meeting Elena and dropping hints for her about Stefan’s past. He found Vicki, abducted her, and took her to the roof of a nearby building. Vicki’s memories had been manipulated by Stefan to make her believe that an animal had attacked her, in order to protect his secret. Damon waited for Stefan to pursue them there, and then he used his powers of mental manipulation (which were significantly stronger than Stefan’s, thanks to Damon feeding on human rather than animal blood as Stefan did) to make Vicki believe that Stefan was the one who attacked her. After tormenting Stefan with this a little, Damon reversed his actions and made Vicki believe it was an animal attack, protecting the secret of both of the brothers’ nature.

Damon met Elena’s classmate Caroline and began feeding off of her (and sleeping with her), manipulating her mind to keep her under control and make her accepting of him routinely drinking her blood. He presented himself as her boyfriend and used the excuse to put himself in close proximity to Elena so that he could drop more manipulative comments and hint at Stefan’s past with Katherine. He also had Caroline bring him to Elena’s house, manipulating the situation socially so that he could be invited inside for dinner (vampires must be invited in to enter a house), meaning that Damon could now enter Elena’s home unchecked. This obviously concerned Stefan, who was becoming romantically involved with Elena. He gave her a locket with vervain in it, leaving her immune to Damon’s attempted mental manipulations when he tried it. This resulted in Elena slapping him and forming a negative opinion of him. (She didn’t realize that he was trying to control her mind; she found his suggestions offensive.)

Stefan kept insisting that Damon still had some humanity deep down inside. Predictably, Damon took this badly and then took it upon himself to prove Stefan wrong by killing the football coach shortly after Stefan had joined the high school football team. This was probably both to try and prove Stefan wrong and to prove that Stefan did not really know him. By that point, Damon had also developed some genuine (though not romantic) interest in Elena, contemplating her while she slept without harming her.

He then took it upon himself to manipulate Stefan’s dreams, planting visions of Damon killing Elena in them. The two brothers fought and then Stefan tried to dose Damon’s drink with vervain, but Damon caught the trick and was angered by it.

Damon continued manipulating Caroline to do his bidding. He chose to attend the Founder’s Ball with her, having her feed negative information about the past with Katherine to Elena and their other friend Bonnie. Meanwhile, Damon used his time at the ball to find and steal a certain necklace with an amber crystal that had once belonged to Emily and which he planned to use to open the tomb that he believed held Katherine.

During the Ball, Elena discovered the bite marks left from Damon’s feeding on Caroline and confronted Damon as what she perceived as his abuse of Caroline. Displeased that Caroline allowed the evidence of his feeding to be discovered, Damon dragged her away from the ball to chastise and then kill her. He began to drain her dry only to keel over. As it turned out, Stefan had previously dosed Caroline’s drink with vervain. Thus, feeding from her incapacitated Damon, causing him to collapse. Stefan then dragged Damon off and imprisoned him in a cell in the basement of the Salvatore House.

He took Damon’s ring and then left his brother to starve in there as he was imprisoned. After about a week without feeding, Damon would desiccate and essentially become mummified, unable to move freely but still alive. Desperate to get out, Damon tried getting to Zack when his relative was checking on him, but he was thwarted by Stefan. He then astrally projected himself and sent his crow to try and urge Caroline to get him out, and he eventually was able to draw her to the Salvatore Boarding House. He had nearly compelled her to get him out of his cell when Zack arrived to try and lock the door again. Damon overpowered Zack and snapped his neck. Caroline managed to escape into the daylight, leaving Damon still starving within the building, unable to leave without his ring.

Damon ended up feeding on his crow, and then he fled into the night to seek blood. He found Vicki and several of her other druggie friends and ended up sating his hunger on all of them and burning the bodies of all save Vicki, who he left alive and took back to the house with him for the sake of an additional blood source. Damon then called Stefan and demanded his ring back, threatening Elena’s safety if he did not get it.

While he was waiting to get his ring back, Vicki became conscious. Damon fed her some of his blood and amused himself by seeing her get high from its effects. After talking to Vicki and hearing about her pathetic life, Damon decided to kill her with his blood in her system, effectively turning her into a vampire. The transformation would only be completed after she fed, however. If she did not feed, then she would die.

Vicki fled and struggled with what was happening to her. Eventually, Stefan found her and was trying to help her, when they encountered a man hunting vampires by the name of Logan Fell. Logan shot Stefan with some wooden bullets in preparation for staking him, but Damon arrived to intervene and bit Logan before he could do so. While he was retrieving his ring from Stefan and helping him remove the wooden bullets, Vicki fed on Logan, completing her transformation, and then fled into the night.

After finding Vicki about to feed on a human, Stefan stopped her, and Damon modified the victim’s memories so he forgot the incident. Damon and Stefan bickered over whether to feed Vicki human or animal blood. Damon began teaching Vicki to use her newfound speed as a vampire, and then she ran off again. Vicki ended up attacking Elena, and in order to stop her, Stefan staked and killed her in front of Elena’s younger brother (and Vicki’s sometime lover), Jeremy. Damon agreed to help clean up the scene.

Elena blamed Damon for all that had happened and lashed out at him physically. He claimed that none of it mattered to him, but when Elena slapped him and insisted that it mattered and he knew it, Damon seemed affected by it. He then took notice of Elena’s bleeding wounds and sent her away. Later, Damon agreed to modified Jeremy’s memories at Elena’s request and took away his grief over Vicki as well as his knowledge of what had happened (he ended up believing that she had left town).

The Sheriff and a few other members of the Founder’s Council had grown suspicious of the deaths in the town and realized that vampires had returned to Mystic Falls. In order to divert their suspicion, Damon agreed to help the Sheriff (who happened to be Caroline’s mother) and the others. He gave them vervain and then orchestrated a situation to place suspicion elsewhere.

Stefan’s best friend Lexi, an older and more powerful vampire, arrived in Mystic Falls for a visit. Damon attacked a couple and left the woman alive, manipulating her memory to point suspicion at Lexi when she was questioned by the police. The Sheriff and Founder’s Council then used vervain on Lexi and captured her, but she managed to escape and turned on the Sheriff. At the last moment, Damon staked and killed her before she could get the Sheriff.

Damon attempted to use Caroline again to recover the necklace he had stolen before, which was now in Bonnie’s hands. Bonnie was a classmate of Elena and Caroline, and she was also a descendant of Emily. Caroline was unable to recover the necklace, however.

Damon and Stefan were at odds over Damon’s killing of Lexi, though Damon claimed only to have done that to protect their secret. They bickered and Damon eventually revealed that Katherine had not died in the fire, and he could recover Katherine from the tomb under Fell’s Church, since this was the year that the comet returned. All he needed was the amber necklace that had belonged to Emily. In fact, that was Damon’s main reason for returning to Mystic Falls.

The two brothers came to the ruins of Fell’s Church, where Emily was possessing Bonnie’s body. Damon reminded her of their deal, but she admitted that she was unwilling to unleash all of the vampires on Mystic Falls, in spite of the fact that Damon had kept his end of the deal. She destroyed the crystal before leaving Bonnie’s body. In his rage at the betrayal, Damon attacked Bonnie and drained quite a bit of her blood before Stefan could pull him away.

Damon was still determined to get into the tomb and reach Katherine. Shortly after this, more vampires began appearing in Mystic Falls. Logan Fell returned as a vampire. After the Salvatore brothers had overmatched him, Damon demanded to know who had sired him. Instead, Logan told Damon that there was another way to open the tomb where Katherine was. Before he could reveal more, he was killed.

When an unknown vampire caused Elena’s car to crash and was on the verge of attacking her, Damon came to her rescue. He took Elena from her car and then began driving her—while she was still unconscious—to Georgia. She had removed her vervain necklace due to a fight she was having with Stefan (she had just discovered that she looked almost identical to Katherine), but he did not compel her to come with her. Instead, he persuaded her to take a break from her life and accompany him.

He came to visit a witch named Bree, who was a lover of his in the past. He wanted Bree’s advice for how to open the tomb, but Bree initially offered him little hope of getting it open. Unbeknownst to Damon, Bree conspired with Lexi’s lover, Lee, to get revenge on him. Lee abducted Elena and lured Damon into a trap. Lee gained the upper hand and was on the verge of killing Damon, when Elena intervened and talked Lee out of it by invoking Lexi’s memory.

Damon then returned the bar where Bree worked. He was there for revenge, and even Bree’s revelation that using Emily’s Grimoire could allow someone else to open the tomb was not enough to save her life. Damon ripped out her heart for her betrayal.

Damon then returned Elena safely to Mystic Falls, the two now on friendlier terms than in the past. He and Stefan acted to protect Elena from another newly appearing vampire who had gained permission to enter her house by posing as a pizza delivery boy. All the information they could get from him was that he was searching for Jonathan Gilbert’s journal (a relative of Elena’s from Civil War times) and believed it held the whereabouts of Emily’s Grimoire, and after that, Stefan killed him.

Shortly after this, Stefan offered to make a deal with Damon: he would help Damon find the Grimoire, open the tomb, and get Katherine out if Damon agreed to allow Stefan to destroy the other 26 vampires in the tomb. Damon was naturally suspicious of this proposal, but Stefan claimed that he wanted Damon gone badly enough to cooperate with him. Elena assured Damon that he could trust Stefan, and thus he accepted the deal, though the truth was that Stefan never intended to keep his end of the bargain.

The three searched for the Gilbert journal but it was stolen by someone else before they could get it. Stefan managed to get a copy of the journal that had been made, however. He discovered that his own father had been the one responsible for the Grimoire and then figured out that he had taken it to his grave. Without telling Damon, Stefan went to unearth the Grimoire with Elena to help him.

Meanwhile, Damon found the vampire responsible for stealing the Gilbert journal, who happened to be a vampire named Anna whose mother was one of the other vampires trapped in the tomb. He had seen her in passing in Mystic Falls during Civil War times. He was able to see the original journal that she had stolen and deduce the whereabouts of the Grimoire himself.

Damon thus arrived at his father’s grave to discover that Stefan had already dug up his father’s grave and found the Grimoire. He was furious about this betrayal, though he chided himself for ever believing Stefan for a moment. Stefan refused to give Damon the Grimoire, sparking his anger further. Damon then grabbed Elena, forced her to drink his blood, and threatened to turn her into a vampire if Stefan did not give him the Grimoire. This forced Stefan to comply.

Shortly after that, Anna kidnapped Elena and Bonnie. Damon refused to help Stefan rescue them in spite of his apology for the past, telling Stefan that he hoped Elena died. Anna approached Damon to offer a deal to cooperate—she would provide the witch for the spell, meaning Bonnie, and he would provide the Grimoire. After she threatened Elena’s life if he did not agree, Damon agreed to cooperate. Instead, Stefan managed to save them on his own with the help of Bonnie’s grandmother, another witch.

It was then that Elena realized that they had to help Damon get Katherine out of the tomb. He already had the Grimoire and he and Anna were both determined to open the tomb. They gained the cooperation of two witches—Bonnie and her grandmother. Elena then apologized to Damon for her part in Stefan’s previous deception and offered to allow him to compel her mind to verify that she was telling the truth, taking off her vervain locket. Instead, Damon elected to trust her without the manipulation and agreed to work with them to get Katherine out of the tomb.

Damon, Stefan, Elena, and the two witches went to the ruins of the church to open the tomb. The witches succeeded in the spell to open the tomb, and Damon entered the tomb with Elena to go looking for Katherine. She voluntarily accompanied him into the tomb, knowing that he wanted to make sure that the witches would not trap him inside. Unbeknownst to him, however, the witches did not remove the seal that kept vampires in the tomb when they opened the door. Elena, as a human, would be able to leave, but Damon would be trapped along with the others.

Damon searched the tomb desperately for Katherine, a bag of blood in hand. He was unable to find her no matter how he searched. Stefan ended up inside as well, drawn in by Elena’s screams for help. Bonnie persuaded her grandmother that they needed to open the seal on the tomb to let them out so that Stefan would not be trapped. Elena also returned inside to urge Damon to come out.

Shortly after they were all out of the tomb, Damon questioned Anna about Katherine’s whereabouts. It was then that she revealed to him that Katherine had never been in the tomb. She had persuaded a guard to let her out of the church in 1864 before it burned. Anna had last seen Katherine in Chicago in 1983, and apparently, Katherine had been aware of Damon’s whereabouts at that time. In all those years, she had never bothered to tell him that she was alive. Damon was left heartbroken by the realization.

Personality

If his personality were to be summed up in a single sentence, Damon could be described as a cruel, snarky jerk. Even discounting his vampire abilities, Damon is a master manipulator. He is cunning, self-interested, and amoral, willing to do just about anything to get what he wants. In essence, Damon is a borderline sociopath, showing very little concern for the well-being or survival of most people. He can be sadistic, taking pleasure in the pain of others. He has no problem taking lives, either human or vampire, if it suits his mood or purpose, and he can turn on a former friend completely upon betrayal.

Sly and narcissistic, Damon is well aware of his own physical attractiveness and has no problem using that to his advantage. He can be very charming, and certainly seductive as well. He often displays a dark and cutting sense of humor. Damon tends to prefer to present those aspects of his personality, and he is often as careless to the suffering of others as he appears. If there are times when he does care, he almost always hides it. Occasional hints of his inner loneliness appear, but Damon is generally mistrustful of others’ motives and tends to view human beings as something he can use/feed from rather than peers. Elena would recently be the lone exception to this, as Damon has shown trust in her and allowed her to comfort him after discovering that Katherine had never been in the tomb at all.

Damon generally tends to remain in control of his emotions. Stefan is one of the few who can provoke him to genuine anger, and his bitterness over their past with Katherine and what he perceives as Stefan’s betrayal persists regardless of the veneer he puts on it or their grudging truce. He can also be reckless, such as the time when he turned Vicki into a vampire simply because he was stuck inside with her and bored. The fact that his actions led to Vicki being killed did not bother him at all.

When he loves, the devotion goes very deep, past all reason. In spite of all that Katherine did—revealing her vampire nature and feeding off of him, killing people, and sleeping with his own brother, Damon’s love for her never wavered. His determination to open the tomb persisted for more than a hundred years. Similarly, his grudge against his own brother has persisted for the same length of time, a reflection of how deeply Stefan’s betrayal affected him and how important Stefan was. Also notable is that Damon has never killed his brother, in spite of having the opportunity to do so, and that he warily accepted a truce with Stefan (only to have it end in betrayal again). Damon can be quite insightful when he puts his mind to understanding someone. Unfortunately, he tends to use this ability to further his manipulations more than anything.

Abilities

Damon is a fairly old vampire (more than 160 years old), and in the Vampire Diaries universe, age tends to dictate strength. He possesses superhuman strength, superior speed and reflexes, enhanced senses, immortality, and the ability to manipulate and control the minds of humans—this requires eye contact with the person he wants to control. Wearing or having ingested vervain (an herb) can prevent the mind control.

Damon also owns a ring made for him by a witch that allows him to come out in the daylight. Without the ring, Damon would lose his immunity to sunlight and will burn like any other vampire. Additionally, Damon can create and control fog. He can jump very high and there are hints that he may be able to fly. He can also take on the form of/control a crow. He can manipulate dreams—those of humans and weaker vampires. He is vulnerable to wood, like all vampires in the Vampire Diaries universe, and a wooden stake through the heart would kill him. (A comprehensive list of rules pertaining to vampires in this universe can be found here: http://wiki.vampire-diaries.net/Vampires_%28TV%29)